In the current information age, information can travel around the globe with a single click of a mouse. The ease with which proprietary, confidential or otherwise sensitive documents can be distributed over the Internet poses a concern for many enterprises and other organizations. There is essentially no limit to how many copies of a single document can be made, and a confidential document that a person holds today can be in the hands of millions tomorrow.
Even if all of the confidential documents are maintained as hard copies, scan functionalities currently provided by scanners and multi-function devices (MFD) allow people to readily generate an electronic version of such a document. The potential misuse of such functionalities can make an organization quite nervous regarding use of such functionalities with the information technology (IT) of the organization. For example, a disgruntled employee of an organization can easily scan a document containing confidential information of the organization and email it to whomever he or she wants.
In order to deal with such a problem, some user authentication is typically required before a user can use the scan functionalities of an IT system, and some organizations allow only a small group of individuals to use scan functionalities. Such organizations can somewhat limit misappropriation or unauthorized distribution of protected information.
However, such control of scan functionalities of an MFD limits utilization of such functionalities and presents an obstacle to potentially enhanced productivity that can be obtained from scan functionalities. For example, if a manager had to approve every scan operation or, even worse, simple forms, which pose no security risk, had to be re-typed every time an electronic version was needed, efficiency and productivity would certainly be reduced. Therefore, limiting access to such functionalities would also detract from productivity.
There remains a need for an improved approach for minimizing illicit transmission of confidential documents.